


despite everything, it's still you

by Zylinbia



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/F, The Doctor/Yasmin Khan (background)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 11:29:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16953177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zylinbia/pseuds/Zylinbia
Summary: “Rose,” the Doctor breathed. “2006, of course.”





	despite everything, it's still you

“Where are we?” Yaz asked anxiously from behind the Doctor, trying to make sense of the readings in front of her.

“2006, I think,” the Doctor sighed, “I can’t figure out why we’re not getting back to 2018!” she bit into a Jammy Dodger angrily and stared at the monitor, silently begging the TARDIS to give her some answers.

“We’ve been oscillating around our own time all day!” Graham complained from across the console.

“I know, I know. I promise I’ll get you back soon enough.” The Doctor changed some settings on the console and tried to start the TARDIS up again, but she only sputtered and died.

“That’s odd,” she murmured, poking her head under the controls to try and figure out what was wrong.

“Maybe we should give it a break,” Ryan suggested.

“You mean give _her_ a break,” the Doctor corrected, for the hundredth time. “Sorry, baby,” she muttered into the wiring she’d been fiddling with. “Perhaps you’re right, Ryan.” She raised her voice as she straightened up. “I’ll take a look around, make sure we aren’t overlapping your timelines before I come back to get you.”

“I doubt 2006 me would recognize 2018 me,” Yaz pointed out. “Sure you don’t want company?”

The answer was, as always (and especially when Yaz was involved) yes, but the Doctor knew it wasn’t safe. “I’m sorry, Yaz, but we’ve already meddled in your history once and I don’t want to risk it again.” She laid her hand on Yaz’s shoulder and looked her in the eye. “I’ll be back before you know it. Promise. Go take a swim in the pool or something.”

“There’s a pool?!” Ryan asked incredulously, and the Doctor grinned at him before stepping out of the TARDIS.

She’d barely closed the door and taken in the ally they’d landed in before she heard the engines go off behind her.

“No!” She gasped, turning and trying to open the door. But it had locked behind her and she could only watch as the TARDIS phased away.

“C’mon!” She yelled at thin air, shoving her hands into her pockets to find her sonic. Her hands hit empty bottom, and she panicked for a moment before remembering that she’d put it in her fanny pack. A quick scan of the space told her that the TARDIS was still there, more or less, just tucked into the coils of space and time out of her sight. “I thought we were done with this,” she told the blank space in front of her disapprovingly. “What’s got you so scared?” When the only response was a gentle hum from her sonic, she sighed and left the alley, looking for the source of whatever had caused her TARDIS to leave without her.

After a moment of walking, her sonic pinged on an anomaly, and she was so busy adjusting the settings to try and pinpoint its location that she bumped right into it.

“Sorry!” she said, glancing up, and then her gaze was trapped on the impossible, brilliant sight in front of her.

“No, I’m sorry,” Rose Tyler replied, smiling. “My head’s in the clouds.”

“Rose,” the Doctor breathed. “2006, of course.”

“I’m sorry, do I know you?” Rose asked, and the Doctor was pulled back to her own present.

She shoved the sonic into her pocket before Rose could get a look at it. “You probably don’t recognize me. You helped me out a couple years back at the mall and I remembered your name.”

Rose’s eyebrow raised. “Don’t remember being all that helpful at that job, but I suppose I’ll take your word for it. You lost or something?”

“Yeah, yeah I suppose I am.” the Doctor glanced around the street they were on. “Haven’t been back here in while and I suppose I got turned around. Not sure where my T- where my ride is.”

“Well it’s getting dark,” Rose noted. “Don’t wanna be hanging around outside when it does.”

“Right. Female. Right,” the Doctor murmured.

“Yeah… so why don’t you come back to my flat? It’s only a short walk away. I’ve got a pull out couch and you can try and find your car in the morning.”

The rational part of her brain screamed something about crossing her own timeline, but she pushed it aside. “Yes. Thank you, Rose.”

“You’re welcome. What’s your name again?”

“John- uh, Jane. Jane Smith.”

Rose snorted. “Sorry, Jane. It’s just I’ve got a… friend... who goes by a similar name sometimes.”

“Yeah? Lots of Smiths in the world, aren’t there. Where is this friend now?”

Rose sighed and tucked a stray bit of blonde hair behind her ear. “Not sure. He goes off sometimes without saying anything. Sometimes he brings me, but… not this time I suppose.”

The Doctor _so_ wanted to find and slap her past self for ever making Rose look like that. “That’s awful, I’m sorry.”

“It’s not all bad,” Rose shrugged. “When I do go, he takes me to the most wonderful places.”

“Oh?” The doctor took a sideways look at her former companion and took in the distant expression on her face. “You fancy him?”

“I dunno, maybe,” Rose said, blushing and staring down at the sidewalk. “Don’t think he likes me, though.”

“You don’t know that,” the Doctor said, mentally cursing herself for being so dense.

“He’s had plenty of times to say something, and he hasn’t,” Rose pointed out. “So many say to stop chasing after guys who don’t show any interest in you. Maybe I should follow that advice.” They turned into her apartment complex. “God, sorry. Didn’t mean to dump all of my emotional baggage on a stranger like that.”

“It’s quite alright, Rose Tyler,” the Doctor replied, and Rose stopped in her tracks.

“How did you know my last name?” she asked warily, and the Doctor leaned past her and tapped the mail slot behind her. “Oh, right.”

“Up we go then?” The Doctor prompted, nodding at the stairwell. Rose stared at her for a moment before shaking away whatever thought she’d been having.

“Yeah. Hope mac n’ cheese is good for dinner because that is all I can cook.”

“Mac n’ cheese is brilliant,” the Doctor replied, bounding up the stairs behind her. “Love a good mac n’ cheese.” She barely kept herself mentioning she’d aided in its invention.

Rose’s flat was familiar and unfamiliar all at once; the Doctor realized she’d never stopped to take it in before. She could tell it was lived in by a woman who expected to leave at any moment, who never quite accepted the fact that the space was indeed hers; Rose’s travel bag sat packed next to an empty corner that the TARDIS would arrive in, her houseplants were all in various states of dying and most surfaces were covered in a layer of dust.

“Sorry, don’t usually expect company to stay over,” she apologized as she hurriedly cleaned off the table.

“No need to apologize, I’m the one intruding on you after all. Here, I’ll get this, you get dinner. Least I can do for your hospitality.” She hoped, somehow, that Rose would see how much she meant it, but Rose just smiled gratefully and disappeared into the kitchen.

“So you said you aren’t working at the mall anymore, right? What are you doing now?” the Doctor did her best to clean in a way that made it look like she wasn’t at all familiar with the apartment.

“Unemployed, at the moment. Hard to keep a job when you keep leaving the country.”

The Doctor touched the edge of a rather important-looking envelope. “How’re you making ends meet, then?”

Rose let out an anxious breath. “I’m not. Not really. I’m hoping a miracle happens, or… guess I’ll just move in with mum.”

The Doctor shoved down a sudden burst of rage. “Sorry to hear that.”

“It’s okay. Your twenties are supposed to be an adventure, right? Mine are just a bit less financially stable than I’d like them to be.” She laughed in the way that people laugh to ease an awkward situation.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to pry.”

“It’s alright. You know, you’re a lot like my friend in another way, too.”

“Oh?” the Doctor asked as innocently as possible.

“Trustworthy face. I keep telling you all these things without even realizing I am.” She poked her head out of the kitchen. “Wine? Makes any meal fancier.”

“Sure, yeah,” the Doctor said, still looking at the stack of bills she’d collected as she’d been cleaning.

“My kind of girl,” Rose grinned. She poured wine into two plastic cups and set them on the table along with a pot of steaming mac n’ cheese.

“Thank you,” the Doctor said, before taking a big scoop.

“No problem. So I’m not doing anything tomorrow, so I can help you find your car.”

“Oh that’s not necessary, you’ve helped enough already,” the Doctor stammered, staring at her mac n’ cheese.

“Nonsense. I want to make sure you get home safe. I’ll be worried about you if I don’t.”

 _I really should choose assholes as companions._ “I’ll be fine, I promise.”

“There’s no arguing with me, Jane. Trust me.” Rose smiled and rested her hand on top of the Doctor’s. “Besides, two eyes will be better than one.”

“Right. Thanks.” She stirred her mac n’ cheese, trying to determine the best way to get herself out of the whole she’d dug herself into.

Rose gave her a set of pajamas and some blankets so she could crash on the couch, and the Doctor lay there, the scent of Rose Tyler wrapped around her for the first time in hundreds of years, waiting for the sound of breathing from the next room to slow so she could track down her TARDIS. There was no way she could tell Rose who she really was, she told herself. There’d be so much to explain, to apologize for, to say… she’d only hurt her more than she already had.

She was going to sneak away and leave a note saying thank you. At least, that’s what she told herself, until she’d pulled her sonic out of her pocket again and read the readings it had quietly been making the entire evening.

“Rose, Rose!” She said, running into her bedroom. Rose blinked at the sudden light looking startled.

“Jane, what on Earth?!”

“Listen, okay,” she sat down on the edge of the bed and took a breath, trying to keep everything running out of her brain at once. “First of all, thanks for the mac n’ cheese. Wait, that’s not first, that’s tenth. First of all, I’m sorry I deceived you. That’s definitely first. Second, need your help.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Ah, getting ahead of myself again. Sorry, I ramble when I’m nervous.” She bounced a bit closer. “Is this before or after Bad Wolf?”

Rose went pale. “A-after.”

“Good, okay. Um. I let you babble on earlier and you didn’t even know who you were talking to and that was so unfair of me so. I’m the Doctor, and I’m so very sorry.”

“You’re-?”

“Yup.”

“But the-”

“Boobs. Yup. I’m a woman now.”

“That’s possible?!”

“Sure is.”

“Wow. Okay.” Rose collapsed back into the bed before popping up suddenly and slamming a pillow into the Doctor’s face. “You _ass!_ ”

“Definitely deserved that.”

“You let me- ugh!” Rose hit her with a pillow again. “I complained about you, _to_ you, all evening and you never said a word!”

“Yeah.” She looked at her hands.

“Why?”

“I… listen Rose, it’s been years, at least a thousand since I last… I thought it would be easier that way. I was mistaken.”

“A thousand years… does that mean… am I _dead?_ ”

“Spoilers.” The Doctor smiled ruefully as another, fresher memory floated to the surface.

“Figured you say something like that.” She pouted, and it took all the Doctor had to keep from telling her.

“You can’t tell me that you saw me, okay? It will just mess with my timeline more than I, er, already have.”

“Sure, yeah. ‘Course.”

“Thanks.”

“So… are you just planning on hanging around in 2006 for an eternity, or…?”

“Oh! Right!” The Doctor leapt off the bed. “I’ve been in 2018, actually. Total rubbish, wouldn’t recommend it. DON’T VOTE FOR BREXIT. However, my TARDIS got just out of sync with me while I was trying to get back and so I got stuck here.”

“What’s the plan, then?”

“Not sure about that bit yet. Give me a moment. Need your help for it, though. Something or someone has made my TARDIS think that past me will show up at any time now, at the same place that I was trying to land. I know, being me and having a halfway decent memory, that I’ll show up in your apartment, not an alley several blocks away.” Rose raised her eyebrow. “No I’m sure this time, I remember the newspaper when I showed up. It was a sunday. Your nail polish was chipped on the thumb, just like that.” Rose looked at her thumb, her face unreadable.

“And it’s Friday,” she finally said.

“Saturday, actually, it’s two in the morning.”

Rose glanced at her alarm clock and groaned. “So why do you need my help?”

“I have no idea why it’s gotten into the TARDIS’s head that she’s going to overlap herself, but I need to prove to her that she’s wrong. I’ve got to make at transmitter with your bio-signature that shows her that we’re not at the time or place that she thinks we’re at. I just need a microwave, a set of jumper cables, and a drop of your blood.”

“Oh.”

“Oh?”

“Well, I mean… it seems silly, maybe, but I was hoping for a bit more of an adventure.”

The Doctor fiddled with the edge of the bedspread. “Can’t. If I linger too long, I don’t know what damage I’ll cause to time. Besides, I’ve got people stuck on the TARDIS right now. They need me.”

“You don’t want to go.” Rose said, a statement rather than a question.

“‘Course not.” She brushed away a tear and looked Rose in the eyes, as earnest as she could. “I did wrong by you. You were 19 and I I lead you into danger without telling you all the consequences, I was selfish, I couldn’t see what I was doing past my own grief, I-”

Rose kissed her fervently, and the Doctor reciprocated, hoping to put all of her “sorry”s in one physical gesture. Rose pulled away and caressed her cheek. “One thousand years older and you’re still turning all of my decisions into your fault.”

“But-”

“No buts. You made mistakes, Doctor. But we both did. We both still do. You can’t take all the blame yourself.”

The Doctor jutted her chin out, but she softened under Rose’s gaze and laid her hand on top of hers. “You’re right.”

Rose laughed, a genuine sound of surprise. “Well, you _have_ grown! The Doctor I know has too much pride to ever admit that he’s wrong.”

“Only took me a thousand years to have some humility.” Rose leaned in and kissed her again.

“Right, so, a drop of my blood, a microwave, and a set of jumper cables?” She said after a moment, wiping the tears off of both of their faces.

“Yeah. Jammy Dodger’d be nice, too.”

Rose giggled. “Will I get any of these objects back?”

“Definitely not the Jammy Dodger. Microwave is up in the air, but the jumper cables should be fine.”

“You’ll owe me a new microwave.”

“Can’t promise anything.” The Doctor scrunched her nose. “Still got empty pockets.”

Rose rolled her eyes and gave her a fond smile. "You're still you, aren't you."

"I'm still me," the Doctor replied.

They worked for the rest of the night, Rose supplying light conversation and tea while the Doctor did her best to not ruin her kitchen table. At first light, they headed out to the alley where the Doctor had last seen the TARDIS.

“This is it, then?” Rose asked. The Doctor nodded.

“Not sure, though. Wibbly wobbly timey wimey, you know.”

“What?”

“Oops! Spoilers.” The Doctor set down the contraption she’d made and took both of Rose’s hands. “Listen, before I go, I need to tell you something.”

“Yes?”

“I never managed to say it before. It was too soon after the Time War... it hurt too much.” She took a step forward, suddenly aware that they were nearly the same height now. “But it’s been a thousand years and I’ve regretted not saying it every second of every day.” She squeezed her hands. “Rose Tyler, I love you, so very, very much.”

“I love you too.” They kissed one more time as if they had all the time in the world to do it, their arms wrapped around each other.

“You’re really never going to say it?”

“Never.” Her nose wrinkled again. “Sorry.”

Rose snorted. “Typical.”

The Doctor kissed her on the nose and crouched down over the device. After a few moments, the familiar sound of the TARDIS echoed through the alley.

“Come to me, Ghost Monument,” the Doctor called, watching her materialize in front of them. She and Rose stared at its doors for a moment and then each other.

“I’ll never forget you,” Rose whispered.

“And I, you.” She squeezed her hand and let go, heading into the TARDIS without looking back, even though it was the most painful thing she’d ever have to do.

“Finally, you’re back!” Graham groaned. “Took you long enough.”

“Yeah, it did.”

Yaz walked around the edge of the console and looked her over, her brow furrowed in worry. “Are you all right, Doctor?”

“Right as rain, Yaz. I promise.” Her muscles heavy as led, she started the TARDIS before she could change her mind.


End file.
